Day 7

As most of you know, Tessa is going through a pretty serious set of health issues right now. We decided to start a blog to give periodic updates on her status so that family and friends can check in at any time and see how Tessa is doing.

As of today, Tessa is the most stable she has been in a week. It's the first 24 hour period that we haven't seen deterioration. The pneumonia has socked in both lungs however X-rays indicate that the amount of infection and fluid in the lungs has not gotten worse in the last 24 hours. It hasn't gotten visually better either however her vital signs indicate that she's able to absorb increasingly more oxygen and dispel increasingly more carbon dioxide. Yesterday about this time she was switched from a conventional ventilator to an oscillator which is an alternate method of artificially breathing for her that involves expanding the lungs and vibrating or oscillating them at a prescribed frequency. It worked like a charm and almost instantly her vital signs improved.

We have a thousand times more hope today than even yesterday morning. As one of the nurses told us yesterday, every little victory is HUGE and stringing a few of these small wins together is a really good sign that she may be turning the corner.

This is potentially going to be a long, drawn out experience for our little Tessa and our family...a marathon, not a sprint (yet another cliche the doctors like to use)...and we're so appreciative of the love and support everybody has shown so far.

PS. I promise that future posts will be much more brief than this first one